[I18n-sig] Japanese commentary on the Pre-PEP (2 of 4)

Martin v. Loewis martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de
Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:13:30 +0100


> The pre-PEP proposed roughly several month's work in terms of new types,
> extended functions, encoding changes and so forth to be implemented over
> several years. But if we don't agree on the direction of movement
> straight then we aren't going to move anywhere ever!
> 
> The central proposal is that "Python strings" could allow characters
> with ordinal values higher than 255. I absolutely cannot see how this
> could break Python code. It is a loosening of a restriction!

If you are convinced that your approach works, but cannot afford to
implement it all, then specify it in a PEP. That might reduce the
amount of work that you have to do, but will increase the amount of
work that others have to do: I'd have to study it, trying to
understand it, then pointing out places where it is imprecise. After
that, I'd have to figure out mentally how to implement it, and point
to the places that are unimplementable. Finally, I'd have to look
around for code and study how it would operate under your proposal.

I seriously doubt that "direction of movement" is a meaningful term
here. It all depends on the details, not the grand picture.

Regards,
Martin